Conventionally, printing agents which generate prints in accordance with requests from customers such as personal users, corporations, and the like exist. Such printing agent provides a service for generating prints on the basis of print data (original) and orders including a print style, the number of copies, due date, and the like from the customer, and making a delivery to the customer. Such printing agent provides the service using a large-scale apparatus such as a long-established offset reproduction printing press or the like.
Nowadays, with the advent of high-speed and high-image quality electrophotographic and ink-jet printing apparatuses, a business category of commercial printing called “copy service”, “printing service”, “Print On Demand (POD) center”, or the like is present.
A print request is made to such printing agent in such a manner that the user mails or directly brings a document recorded on paper sheets or in a digital medium (FD, MO, CD-ROM, or the like) and a print order sheet (order instruction) that describes the number of copies to be printed, bookbinding method, due date, and the like of that document into the printing company (document entry).
Also, a system that can issue/receive print orders on-line via the Internet or intranet has been in practical use. For example, in “DotDoc.Web” available from Fuji Xerox Co., Ltd., the user can place a print order by accessing a home page provided by the printing agent from a computer of his or her company. More specifically, the user accesses that home page, fills in required items such as orderer information (receiving address or the like), print style, the number of copies, and the like of a print request form, and submits the print request form together with a document file. In this way, the user can place a print order of that document file.
Upon reception of the request from the user, the printing agent side generates a print order sheet, and forms a schedule of the print processing. Print and bookbinding processes are executed by a printer connected to a work computer, and generated prints are delivered to the customer in accordance with the schedule, thus ending the service.
The printing agent which executes the print processing requested by the user must complete the print processing with stable quality in time for the designated due date. Also, in a large-scale printing center, a plurality of operators must parallelly process many print requests (orders) using a large variety of printing apparatuses and work computers. For this purpose, resources such as staffs (operators), apparatuses, and the like need to be efficiently utilized as much as possible.
As a more practical problem of the printing agent, when any abnormality has occurred in a printer, a process may halt, and the subsequent process schedule may stop. If a large variety of printers are used, the use states of the printers must be recognized, and management must be made to prevent processes from backing up due to any abnormality of the printers.
In order to solve such problem, Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2002-63004 discloses a print control apparatus which changes the start/end times of a print job written in a schedule management table in accordance with the processing states of the printers. In this Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2002-63004, when any abnormality has occurred in a printer, a system that prints automatically using a normal alternative printer (alternative printing function) is proposed.
However, in the above prior art, the general alternative printing function immediately starts an alternative printer if any abnormality is found in a printer. However, since print processing is executed in an environment in which no abnormality preferably occurs, it is desired for the user to output to the last using a printer which is designated as a print destination initially. For this reason, if the abnormality that has occurred in a printer can be immediately recovered, an alternative printer is preferably not used. On the other hand, in order to complete the print processing within a scheduled time and to meet the due date, it is sometimes necessary to perform the alternative print processing.